### 98

Xo Street is lined with fishmongers’ and butchers’ shops and small workshops that make and sell hardware and travelling equipment. You pass their shuttered doors and arrive at the city’s quay. Thunder rumbles and the dark waters of the estuary roil and seethe, illuminated and tormented by jagged bolts of lightning. Scarlet flags are flying all along the quayside as a weather warning. It is forbidden to take a boat out when these flags are displayed. Most of the boats are securely moored and under canvas, save for a few foreign trading vessels that are berthed at a long stone pier. These are not under covers, but they are well secured with ropes and chains, their hatches battened down and their sails stowed away in lockers below deck.

Opposite the stone pier you see a large tavern with a brightly painted façade. Warm amber light pours from the panes of its bow-fronted windows and a sign in the middle of its façade proudly announces its name: The Tkukoma Tavern.

If you wish to enter the Tkukoma Tavern, turn to 280.

If you decide to forego the tavern and make your way across the storm-swept quayside, you will arrive at a street which heads off in a northerly direction. This is called Chunang Street (turn to 59).